Laptop computers derive their power from power supply units that serve a dual role, in that they feed power from a front end AC-DC converter to the core circuitry of the computer, and they also supply charging current to a computer battery that is used to power the computer when an AC source is not available. Because the current demand of the computer can vary, it is common practice to provide some form of battery charger current throttling mechanism that limits the operation of, and thereby the current being supplied by, the battery charger during high current demands of the computer. Of course a brute force way to handle the situation would be to provide a power supply that could accommodate both the peak power demand of the computer and that of the battery charger; however, doing so is expensive and therefore has not been the design of choice. Conventional charging current throttling schemes are configured to respond to one or more current monitoring locations, and are designed to gradually reduce the duty ratio of the pulse width modulator of the battery charging current supply circuitry. As such, they are slow and can allow an unwanted overcurrent condition to occur at the output of the AC-DC adapter.